Lots Of Stars Shine On London Stage, Even If The Plays They`re

In Don`t

Spring has come to London, and with it an array of stars on stage. If each play were as good as its leading actor, this would mark a theatrical explosion, as well as a celebrity constellation.

But the truth is that most of these evenings are primarily enjoyable as essays in star technique; only a revival of George Bernard Shaw`s infrequently mounted ``The Apple Cart`` matches its above-the-title draw: Peter O`Toole. The rest send you out wondering why such fine actors are drawn to such weak material.

Chiefly disappointing is Ronald Harwood`s ``Interpreters`` (Queens Theatre), Harwood`s first West End play since ``The Dresser,`` which went on to Broadway and a movie starring Albert Finney. Peter Yates, a Briton best-known for such films as ``Breaking Away,`` ``Eleni`` and ``The Dresser,`` has returned to the London stage to direct ``Interpreters,`` only to be met with a play that frequently withers in its trumped-up triviality.

Luckily, Yates and Harwood have the inestimable Maggie Smith on hand to steer their shaky vehicle, a love story between two interpreters at a preparatory meeting in London for a Soviet state visit. Ten years earlier, the Russian-speaking Englishwoman Nadia (Smith) had a torrid affair in New York with the English-speaking Russian Viktor (Edward Fox). The relationship ended, and Nadia suffered a breakdown. She now finds her equilibrium threatened by Viktor`s reappearance.

The framework of the play has characters addressing an unseen board of inquiry investigating accusations of salacious behavior: ``It`s all a matter of interpretation,`` says Nadia, as if the play were a ``Rashomon`` of romance. But Harwood isn`t that clever. He subordinates emotional anguish to a convenient punch line (``You, frigid? Are they insane?`` asks Viktor; ``No, just English,`` comes the reply). Consequently, Nadia`s distress is shortchanged.

The actress, however, compensates. Whether acknowledging her status as

``the old maid of Whitehall`` or admitting her fight to ``keep on an even keel,`` Smith movingly shows intellect vying with emotion, her nerves the scarred battleground. If she cannot provide what an author doesn`t write, Maggie Smith still makes the play worth seeing.

Another double Oscar-winner, Glenda Jackson, also is laboring in a weak cause with her new London assignment, Charles Wood`s ``Across From the Garden of Allah`` (Comedy Theatre).

Wood, who wrote the 1960s films ``The Knack`` and ``Help,`` has plundered his love-hate relationship with Hollywood before: in ``Veterans`` and ``Has

`Washington` Legs?`` This time, the mouthpieces of his all-too-familiar venom are Nigel Hawthorne and Glenda Jackson as a British screenwriter and his wife.

Although Hawthorne`s scripts are never actually filmed, the couple`s Stateside stints boast no shortage of incident: He is rudely snubbed, she is propositioned in the hall of the hotel, and the two of them are mugged, presumably for daring to walk the streets of a vehicle-obsessed community.

Taped music from, among others, Lou Reed, Steely Dan, and the Eagles allows director Ron Daniels a firm sense of locale in which the cast tries to enliven Wood`s borrowed bile. From Nathaniel West`s ``The Day of the Locust`` and Evelyn Waugh`s ``The Loved One`` on page to ``Annie Hall`` and ``Down and Out in Beverly Hills`` on-screen, we`ve been down these comic streets before, and Jackson`s starchy asides merely make us yearn for her bygone Hollywood days, not this predigested disgust.

Albert Finney`s Hollywood days go on and on and on, from his Oscar-nominated ``Tom Jones`` in 1963, to `73 and `84 nominations for ``The Dresser`` and ``Under the Volcano.`` Now, in a decided change of pace, Finney has returned to the stage in ``Orphans`` (Hampstead Theatre), Lyle Kessler`s play that premiered at Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago in January, 1985. It`s a considerable compliment to Finney that he amply holds his own, sharing the small fringe stage with Steppenwolf veteran Kevin Anderson, as the illiterate Philip, and Jeff Fahey as his older brother Treat. Having seen the show off-Broadway last September, I don`t think the play stands up to a second viewing, but Finney and company make it compulsively watchable.

As the orphaned businessman Harold, kidnaped by the two young toughs, Finney lends the necessary deflating comic presence to author Kessler`s high- minded pretensions. Sliding out of his captors` ropes, Finney sardonically gives a lesson in proper kidnaping technique. True to the Sam Shepard-like role reversals of which Kessler seems fond, the apparent victim Harold is soon exerting control; both the boys and their apartment receive a thorough overhaul. The boys take Harold to heart like the father they never had.